Search for the Messiah in Pools of Unknowing

The first phase in the development of Jewish mysticism before its crystallization in the mediaeval Kabbalah is also the longest. It's literary remains are traceable over a period of almost a thousand years, from the first century B.C. to the tenth A.D., and some of its important records have survived...Between the physiognomy of early Jewish mysticism and that of mediaeval Kabbalism there is a difference which time has not effaced.

Gershom Scholem
Chapter 2: Merkabah Mysticism and Jewish Gnosticism
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

The first thought I had when I read this passage from Scholem's classic is that this early mystic Jewish tradition occurred within the lifetime of Jesus, the apostle Paul, and later "church fathers", and some the writers during the era of the Gospels and Epistles could possibly have been influenced by such a tradition.

OK, I know you may think that's rather far fetched, but considering the "mystic" nature of John's Gospel as well as the imagery in Revelation, I don't think I'm reaching too far out of the bounds of credibility, particularly considering all (or most) of the early "documenters" of the teachings of the Jewish Messiah were Jewish themselves. Perhaps Yochanan ben Zakkai, who Scholem cites as one of "the most important representatives of mystical and theosophical thought" during the mid-first century era influenced some of the writings about Yeshua (Jesus) and his followers.

All of this, at least in terms of my very limited knowledge, is very thinly connected and anyone even marginally more familiar with the topic (which includes just about anyone familiar with Jewish mysticism) could blow away my arguments and suggestions with a mild sneeze. Still, it's rather compelling to take a look at these tentative connections and consider the possibilities.

Derek Leman, in his recent blog post Biblical Glimpses Into Mystical Horizons makes a few comparisons of his own:

EPISTLES: The one who ascended into the third heaven in 2 Corinthians 12. The uniting of all things in Messiah in Ephesians 1. The one who descended into human form in Philippians 2. The God and Lord of 1 Corinthians 8. The Radiance of His Glory in Hebrews 1. The One in Whom All Things Adhere in Colossians 1 (and the Image of the Invisible God).

Scholem writes:

Thus for example in the "Visions of Ezekiel", which have recently become known, Ezekiel sees the seven heavens with their seven Merkabahs (driven by four chayot or "living creatures"; Isaiah 6:2, Revelation 4:8) corresponding to the seven heavens is still innocent of any mention of Hekhaloth, or chambers, of the Merkabah.

This references Ezekiel's vision (Ezekiel 1:4-26) and definitely recalls the scriptures Leman cites including:

I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. -2 Corinthians 12:1-7

Again, I can't say for certain nor to I assert as absolute, the connections I'm proposing here, but novice in mysticism that I am, it certainly sparks some interest. Still, Paul seems to be saying that he has accomplished what many mystics throughout the ages have attempted: a transition (in one form or another) into the realms outside of our own into those that approach the Throne of God...and he returned sane and whole.

I've said numerous times before in other blog posts, that I'm becoming convinced that we cannot understand the teachings of the Jewish Messiah and his early disciples without some ability to look at those teachings through a Jewish mystical lens. This goes beyond an understanding of Torah and Talmud (and possibly flies in the face of Judaism's more "rational" understanding of God), but there are "mysteries" exposed in the Apostolic scriptures that suddenly become more comprehensible if we don't examine them only with a literal and practical microscope. Seeing that Jewish mysticism can trace its origins to the first century B.C.E. (and perhaps before even that), makes it all the more likely that such a tradition found its way into the early Jewish writings describing the person and mission of the Jewish Messiah. How the divine could become a man and dwell among human beings requires belief beyond the physical realm and mysticism is the door that leads to the world where the mysterious can, in some fashion, become known.

I suppose you could just consider me a person who has gone off the deep end and that mysticism is a fool's errand. You wouldn't be alone. From Scholen's book:

If, finally, you were to ask me what kind of value I attach to Jewish mysticism, I would say this: Authoritative Jewish theology, both mediaeval and modern, in representatives like Saadia, Maimonides, and Hermann Cohen, has taken upon itself to task the formulating an antithesis to pantheism and mythical theology, i.e.: to prove them wrong.

Here, we see some of the greatest luminaries among Jewish wisdom and intellectualism standing opposed against the Jewish mystic tradition. Nevertheless, Jewish mysticism has survived such attempts to be extinguished and endures into modern times in Kabbalah and Chasidic Judaism. It occurs to me that the philosophical vs. the mystical approach to God doesn't have to be either/or. They can both co-exist as different perspectives; perceiving God from radically different angles of observation (and participation). And then, there's this:

Levertoff believed that the Gospels and Chasidic Judaism merged seamlessly, and he dedicated his scholarship to demonstrating that conviction. He is said to have best developed his ideas in his major life work, a manuscript on the subject of Christ and the Shechinah. Unfortunately, the book was never published and the manuscript has been lost; however, he presented a lecture titled "The Shekinah Motif in the New Testament Literature" to the Society of the Study of Religions that we may assume represented something of an abstract of the larger work. This short paper provides a glimpse into a compelling and radical attempt to reconcile Jewish mysticism and faith in an exalted, divine Messiah.

Commentary on Paul Philip Levertoff and
Love and the Messianic Age

A rare but direct and living connection between the Chasidim, their mystic understanding of things, and the Gospel of John brought young Feivel Levertoff into discipleship under the great Rebbe Yeshua of Nazareth. He recognized the mystic in the Gospels and in the teachings of the Messiah. In fact, Levertoff thought it was impossible to understand the Jewish Messiah without a mystic understanding.

Where does that leave those of us without that understanding? It leaves us at the doors to the libraries and maybe even the synagogues, daring to enter and striving to learn more.

Knowledge is beyond me; exalted, I am incapable of it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? And where can I flee from Your Presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; were I to take up wings of dawn, were I to dwell in the distant west, there, too Your hand would guide me, and Your right hand would grasp me. -Psalm 139:6-10

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Who to Believe?

In this New York Times bestseller, leading Bible expert Bart Ehrman skillfully demonstrates that the New Testament is riddled with contradictory views about who Jesus was and the significance of his life. Ehrman reveals that many of the books were written in the names of the apostles by Christians living decades later, and that central Christian doctrines were the inventions of still later theologians. Although this has been the standard and widespread view of scholars for two centuries, most people have never learned of it.

Amazon.com product description of
Jesus Interrupted by Bart Ehrman

In "How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?" Larry Hurtado investigates the keen devotion to Jesus that emerged with surprising speed after his death. Reverence for Jesus among early Christians, notes Hurtado, included both grand claims about Jesus' significance and a pattern of devotional practices that effectively treated him as divine. Directed at readers across religious lines, this book argues that whatever one makes of such devotion to Jesus, the subject at least deserves serious historical consideration.

Amazon.com product description of
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God by Larry W. Hurtado

I've just started reading Hurtado's book, but I'm already impressed with both his scholarship and humility. I've already read and reviewed Ehrman's book and although I don't agree with all of his conclusions, he too makes a compelling case. And thereby lies my problem.

I've been turning this issue over in the back of my mind for awhile, but reading Hurtado yesterday forced the issue to the surface, something like an eruption at Old Faithful. It wasn't the only catalyst, but I'll explain the rest in a moment.

I've been reading books written by all of these scholars, theologians, and Bible experts and trying to put everything they're telling me into some kind of framework that makes sense and helps me sort out my faith. The problem is, most of them make a sort of sense and I can see all of their points of view. They're well educated and they know their stuff. The problem is, they don't all agree with each other. The real problem is, I don't operate at anywhere near their level of intelligence or education. How am I supposed to critique and evaluate one view vs. the other? How am I supposed to read all these books and say "this one's right and that one's wrong?"

This isn't just a matter of deciding between Ehrman, a New Testament scholar who is an agnostic and most assuredly doesn't believe in the deity of Jesus, and Hurtado, a Professor of New Testament Language and theology at the University of Edinburgh, who certainly does make a case for the deity of Christ, but all of the other learned teachers who have published their opinions and understandings.

For instance, Hurtado mentions Maurice Casey and his book From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God, which I also reviewed and found convincing, and refutes Casey's conclusions that the church arrived at the decision to "make" Jesus a God centuries after the resurrection and ascension. Hurtado makes a pretty good point about the early adoption of the worship of Jesus, but I either have to take his word for it that Casey is wrong or somehow replicate Hurtado's and Casey's research and see for myself, which is beyond my cognitive and educational abilities.

It's not just the big time experts either. I happened to mention (and I've been mentioning this a lot), that I find Paul Philip Levertoff's perspective on the Gospels to be particularly convincing, largely because Levertoff seems to solve many of my personal problems with the traditional Christian viewpoint on Christ. However, there are other opinions that oppose my personal judgment:

Let us stop to consider what you are arguing here: you are arguing that a first-century Jewish teacher is better understood in the context of eighteenth-century Jewish mysticism from Poland derived primarily from a thirteenth-century work of Jewish mysticism from Spain than in the context of his students' (John) students' (Polycarp) students (Iraneus) ninety years later.

While I think you can make a case that the unique perspectives of a Chasidic Jewish scholar who lived less than 100 years ago might say more about the ancient Jewish teachings of Jesus than Gentiles who lived much closer to the time of Christ, I'm hardly an expert and after all, I can be wrong. The young man who made this comment on one of my recent blog posts is intelligent and certainly better educated in both Christian and Jewish theologies than I am. In trying to understand, explain, and defend my evolving comprehension of who Jesus is and what he taught, I'm barely able to keep my head above water.

How do people do it? How do people seem so completely sure of what they believe, not just in general, but down to the most minute details?

I do have one answer. I noticed something when I was reading Hurtado's book. I bought a used copy from Amazon and the book has various highlights and underlines (apparently made by the original owner of the book) pointing out specific parts of the text. So far, I've noticed that the passages treated thus all support the deity of Jesus and the idea that worship of Jesus as God occurred almost immediately after the ascension and certainly within the first 30 years after the ascension of the Jewish Messiah to the right hand of God the Father.

I think people read books that support the positions they already hold. I previously made the point that I thought Bowman's and Komoszewski's book Putting Jesus in His Place seemed specifically written for an audience that already believed the book's central assumptions (and the book is written as a teaching aid for Bible studies to present the conclusions of the authors).

I suppose only reading books that support your already held beliefs works in a sense, but what about people like me who are trying to get a wider perspective? Are we just supposed to take an expert's or a group of experts' word that they are right and everyone else is wrong? Which expert or experts are we supposed to believe? On what basis do we choose to believe one scholar and not the other? I want to be a good "Berean", but apparently they were a lot smarter than I am.

I can see agnostics and atheists believing Ehrman because his viewpoint supports their own. I can see evangelical Christians believing Bowman and Komoszewski because the points they make in their book support the evangelical view of Jesus. I can see more scholarly Christians who support the deity of Christ going for Hurtado's book because that's what he presents. I can see people like me, who need to believe that Christianity isn't totally and completely divorced from a Jewish conceptualization (Jewish Messiah teaching Jewish disciples, revealing mysteries in a Jewish mystic context in first century Judea...seems like there ought to be a Jewish interpretation being employed to me) gravitating toward people like Levertoff, who see the Gospels as closely mapping to Chasidic mystical teachings.

But are we supposed to make these sort of conclusions based on what seems or feels right to us? Is there nothing objective to our understanding of God? In the final analysis, are we just letting our personalities determine what is right and what is wrong as far as how we understand our faith in Jesus?

If anyone's got an answer to these questions, I'm all ears.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Book Review: Yeshua in Context

The stories of Yeshua demand a response. The normal order of meaning, the rules of the game called life, are changed in his stories. We are each confronted with the problem of meaning, the possible ways his story intersects our story.

In a number of his sayings, Yeshua says something about himself or about a way of life that calls for action. He implies that when we have encountered him (in our case, through story and not in person), we will understand something about the realm above, about a deeper life, about a breakthrough from the present world to the world to come.

Derek Leman in the final chapter of his book
Yeshua in Context: The Life and Times of Yeshua the Messiah

Yeshua in Context is a book about stories. You might say that, from Leman's perspective, the writers of the Gospels are storytellers rather than reporters. Leman, a theologian who earned his Master's degree in Hebrew Bible studies from Emory University, and who is a Rabbi at Tikvat David Messianic Synagogue, addresses what many New Testament scholars view as inconsistencies in the Gospels, by presenting them as differences of intent in what the writers were trying to communicate about the Jewish Messiah.

Leman is also a storyteller. By writing this book, he's sharing with his audience his own perspective; his own story, about who the Jewish Messiah is to him and what Yeshua means in Leman's life. Leman tells us a story that is largely scholarly and somewhat personal, with just a hint of the mystic.

Yeshua in Context is also about giving the reader access to the story. At only 154 pages long and presenting no lengthy set of footnotes, no extensive bibliography, and not even a single appendix, Leman constructs a text that takes the complexity of the life of Yeshua (Jesus), his teachings, his 1st century Jewish context, and his Messianic identity, and opens them up to the rest of us with deceptive ease.

I say "deceptive" because there's a great deal of density contained just beneath the surface of each page in the book. For instance, Leman takes the familiar parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) and tells the reader something about Yeshua's role as a prophet as it relates to the prophetic tales of Isaiah and Jeremiah. He takes the much discussed and interpreted Beatitudes and presents his own story about the coming Kingdom of God. He engages the parable of the wicked tenants (Mark 12:1-12) and discusses the mystery of why a father would send a beloved son on an assuredly fatal mission.

He even says something about a topic near and dear to me; the divine nature of the Messiah as related to the Shechinah and seen through a Kabbalistic lens:

The Aramaic paraphrases of Yeshua's day, the Targums, said about this story that the Israelites looked for healing to the Memra of God, the Word of God, the manifestation of God on earth...This is exactly who Yeshua is claiming to be: the one with all the nature of God manifested on earth, the radiation of God's being, his Word or Presence. In kabbalistic terminology (from later Judaism), Yeshua is the sum of all sefirot (emanations) and the Father is the Ein Sof (the One without End, the unseeable One...).

I said before that there were no lengthy collection of footnotes in this book, but a brief Bibliography is offered right before Chapter 1, and in the body of each chapter, any of the works cited are referenced by the author's last name and page number. As teacher and student, the writer adequately points back to his research, albeit in a way that doesn't interrupt the flow of his narrative.

When I write reviews for technical books, I usually include a mention of any book-associated websites and the value added to the book by on line material. In this case, Leman has created a website (thanks to the power of WordPress) dedicated to continuing for the reader, the education found in his book. In a sense, it's a very large extension to what, on the surface, seems like a relatively short discussion.

One of the reasons I asked to review this book was because of my personal attempt to reconcile the internal discrepancies of the Gospels with the authority of the Bible. How can the holy writings of Christianity be authoritative if they don't perfectly and completely "line up", so to speak? Is the source material of Christianity flawed and, if so, how can we depend upon it as an accurate rendition of the author of our faith?

I'm not sure I found the whole answer in Leman's book, but I think I found some of the answer as related to other books and, more to the point, other perspectives. I'm coming to an understanding of the discrepancies recorded in the Gospels, in terms of what traditional Jewish scholars would view when reading the differences between Talmudic and Midrashic versions of the same story. From a modern, western point of view, we struggle with inconsistent reports from two or more witnesses of the same event, and attempt to harmonize the various iterations. From the Jewish student's vantage point however, no problem exists. Each "story" is accepted on its own merit without the need to have it completely make sense with other stories. The reader gleans the important elements from the story without trying to make it match up with what others have written about the same anecdote.

This is where, in my opinion anyway, the authority of the Bible can be discovered. Not in viewing it as a comprehensive report on testimony delivered in a court case, but as a collection of holy writings by righteous men (tzaddikim) who want us to experience the most righteous one of God through a series of mystic tales.

You might not find that all of your questions about the Jewish Messiah are answered in Derek Leman's book, but it's a good place to start.

Yeshua in Context is available for purchase at Mount Olive Press.

Seeing Jesus Through Different Windows

There are even methods to help decipher all the hidden meanings in the text. One is called the principle of first mention. Whenever you come across a significant word in the passage, find out where this word first appears in the Bible. John does this in his gospel. This first mention of the word love in 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son." We then discover that love is first mentioned in Genesis 22 when God tells Abraham to take "your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love" and offer him as a sacrifice. John is doing something intentional in his gospel: He wants his readers to see a connection between Abraham and his son, and God and God's son. John's readers who know the Torah would have seen the parallels right away.

-Rob Bell
Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

I don't know if Bell is completely accurate in what he says in his book (Pastors of "megachurches" aren't necessarily also scholars or researchers), but it is a compelling image. Many scholars and even "ordinary" believers, have a tendency to read the Bible from a purely literal and historical vantage point. In extreme cases, people read the Bible in English and believe that the surface meaning is the meaning of what the author (and God) is trying to say (and here, we aren't even sure that the author of John's Gospel was the "John the Apostle" who walked with Jesus...in fact, it probably wasn't).

Derek Leman in his book Yeshua in Context, paints a picture of the Gospels as "stories" which communicate something about the Jewish Messiah that the Gospel writers wanted their audience to especially understand. These are viewpoints, perspectives, and interpretations about the Messiah that are being presented, rather than literal facts and events you'd expect in history books or (presumably) as reported on CNN (and I've just started Leman's book yesterday, so a full review will be forthcoming).

I'm tempted to say that Paul Philip Levertoff in his book Love and the Messianic Age, takes his interpretation one step further, but Levertoff's step is more sideways and represents a difference not so much in degree as in identity.

One of the things that's been impressed upon me as I've read these (and other) different authors, is how they each see Jesus (Yeshua), his context, his lived experience, and what we are supposed to understand about him, in almost fundamentally dissimilar ways. Sure, there's some overlap, but when reading all of the different books on the issues of Christ's deity, mission, and teachings, it's like I'm reading about different people rather than a single individual.

So far, I've been most impressed with Levertoff's perspective (and a full review of his book and the Vine of David commentary on Levertoff is also forthcoming) on the Jewish Messiah and the writings that describe him and what he did (and does).

He read the Gospels in German. Then he obtained a Hebrew version and reread them. Though he was in the midst of a Gentile, Christian city where Jesus was worshiped in churches and honored in every home, Feivel felt the Gospels belonged more to him and the Chasidic world than they did to the Gentiles who revered them. He found the Gospels to be thoroughly Jewish and conceptually similar to Chasidic Judaism. He wondered how Gentile Christians could hope to comprehend Yeshua (Jesus) and His words without the benefit of a classical Jewish education or experience with the esoteric works of the Chasidim.

Taken from Jorge Quinonez:
"Paul Philip Levertoff: Pioneering Hebrew-Christian Scholar and Leader"
Mishkan 37 (2002): 21-34
as quoted from Love and the Messianic Age

We all interpret Jesus from our own perspective; not just our educational or even our own faith perspectives, but from who we are as childhoods, personalities, and lived experiences. It's always bothered me that most of the people writing about the Jewish Messiah aren't Jewish and particularly, they aren't people who have the benefit of a completely lived Jewish identity, background, and education starting from childhood (there are a few exceptions). Even Christians who are well educated NT scholars, come from an essentially Gentile background and they are people who were born, raised, and who identify with a non-Jewish world view; people who did not take upon themselves an educational experience that included the Jewish writings until adulthood.

Even many Jews in the Messianic movement, previously identified with Christianity and worshiped in a church context before shifting into a Messianic Jewish worship style and becoming educated in a Jewish faith perspective (which includes Talmud study, among other things).

Levertoff, having been born, raised, and educated in a Chasidic Jewish environment and context from childhood, applies a seamless Jewish experience across the entire Bible, looking at the Gospels from a Talmudic and Chasidic vantage point, and is able to see what most of us would miss. This isn't just a viewpoint that illustrates heretofore "hidden" messages in the text, but a fundamental shift in understanding that allows us to read the Gospels in the tradition of mystic Jewish writings rather than history, literature, or "the Christian sayings of Jesus".

I'm not denigrating any of these other assessments or studies, but I do believe they all lack something critical that, in its absence, leaves us with questions that Levertoff's Chasidic presentation are more equipped to answer.

As I mentioned, I'll write individual book reviews (in the case of Bowman's and Komoszewski's evangelical view of Putting Jesus in His Place, I already have) on each of the works I've cited, but I had the need this morning, to write a sort of summary of my investigations into the deity of Jesus and how my journey of exploration into an understanding of the Jewish Messiah has been proceeding.

I must say that my level of "anxiety" over my faith and understanding has been reduced significantly, I'm learning a lot of things that were simply invisible to me before this...

...and I'm having fun.

Chag Sameach Purim.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

A Short Lesson from Feivel the Chasid

He read the Gospels in German. Then he obtained a Hebrew version and reread them. Though he was in the midst of a Gentile, Christian city where Jesus was worshiped in churches and honored in every home, Feivel felt the Gospels belonged more to him and the Chasidic world than they did to the Gentiles who revered them. He found the Gospels to be thoroughly Jewish and conceptually similar to Chasidic Judaism. He wondered how Gentile Christians could hope to comprehend Yeshua (Jesus) and His words without the benefit of a classical Jewish education or experience with the esoteric works of the Chasidim.

Taken from Jorge Quinonez:
"Paul Philip Levertoff: Pioneering Hebrew-Christian Scholar and Leader"
Mishkan 37 (2002): 21-34
as quoted from Love and the Messianic Age

I wonder the same thing. I'll be doing a full review of Vine of David's Love and the Messianic Age by Paul Philip Levertoff in the near future, including the rather large commentary that accompanies the book, but I wanted to connect the aforementioned quote back to last Tuesday's book review and the decidedly Evangelical Christian view of Jesus and his teachings that we normally encounter.

Levertoff had a very specific way of looking at the Gospels based on his education and Chasidic worldview and, if he had not become a disciple of Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus), it's quite possible he would have been one of the foremost Chasidic Rabbis of his generation. Instead, he chose to pioneer, in the late 19th through early 20th centuries, an early incarnation of what we now call "Messianic Judaism". It must have been a tremendously difficult and rewarding role to play, and I am sorry that more of his works have not survived because he could have taught us so much more. Here's what I mean:

Levertoff believed that the Gospels and Chasidic Judaism merged seamlessly, and he dedicated his scholarship to demonstrating that conviction. He is said to have best developed his ideas in his major life work, a manuscript on the subject of Christ and the Shechinah. Unfortunately, the book was never published and the manuscript has been lost; however, he presented a lecture titled "The Shekinah Motif in the New Testament Literature" to the Society of the Study of Religions that we may assume represented something of an abstract of the larger work. This short paper provides a glimpse into a compelling and radical attempt to reconcile Jewish mysticism and faith in an exalted, divine Messiah.

Love and the Messianic Age is all we have left of Levertoff's insights into the nature and character of Christ in relation to the Shechinah or the Divine Presence; that aspect of the eternal God which descended upon and inhabited the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert, and later, upon Solomon's Temple in holy Jerusalem. If his book had survived, I believe it would have answered many of the questions about Jesus that Gentile Christianity lacks the ability, experience, and viewpoint to even perceive. Authors like Bowman and Komoszewski, for all of their education and experience in the realm of Evangelical Christianity (and please forgive the conceit) don't have a clue next to what I believe Levertoff saw and understood.

Near the end of the short biography of Levertoff's life that I read last night, I discovered this:

Feivel Paul Philip Levertoff died at the age of 75 on July 31, 1954, on Rosh Chodesh Av (the New Moon of the Fifth Month).

I was born on July 23, 1954, eight days before Levertoff died. All Jewish male babies born on the same day as I was, would have experienced the Brit Milah; the ritual circumcision and naming, as commanded by God to Abraham, on the day Levertoff died. I don't know if it means anything for a Jewish boy to undergo the brit milah on the day a great Rebbe dies, but I hope it does. Although it can have no impact on a non-Jewish Christian like me, it still means something that our lifetimes overlapped for those eight days and, for a very brief period of time, we shared the same planet.

Although he is gone, I hope to learn a little something from what Paul Philip Levertoff left behind. May he be remembered for good and may his legacy cause both Jewish and Gentile disciples of the Messiah to draw one step closer to Heaven.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Bible is a Mystery Novel

It could only be a matter of time before the conflicts of the early period reached the stage when Judaism would reject Gentile Christianity, and Gentile Christianity, already objecting to the Jews "after the flesh" (cf Rom 2.28-29, Phil 3.2-3), would reject "the Jews" as Gentiles had always done. We shall see that the non-Pauline documents of the New Testament show us independent developments on these same lines. When we have taken them into account, we shall be able to trace the point at which the conflicts intensified by war between Israel and Rome drove christological development up to the deity of Jesus, and expelled the Johannine community from the synagogue.

from Chapter 8: The Christology of St Paul
From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God
by Maurice Casey

This will be short, since I have more questions than answers. I could have quoted from a number of different places in Casey's book, but I just finished Chapter 8 and so I picked that little bit of text to present here. I have experienced a number of different inputs that have spawned questions about the Bible recently, including the conversation going on in a blog post by Judah Himango and Derek Leman's latest missive, Missing Mysticism in the Bible. I must admit with more than a little chagrin, that my understanding and view of the Bible has remained static for quite some time. I believed that the Bible, at least as it was originally given by God to the various writers, was inerrant and that we knew exactly who wrote various parts of the Bible, and under what conditions all of the different books were written (Moses wrote the Pentateuch, each of the Prophets wrote the books with their names on them, the Gospel writers put their names on their books, and so on). I also believed that the Bible we have now is the exact Bible God wanted us to have and that, through supernatural means, He made sure that the correct books were canonized, that the content was totally accurate, and that the Bible was completely internally consistent.

Having done a bit of reading lately (Ehrman and Casey, so far), I am no longer convinced of these points.

You may say that your faith isn't ultimately dependent on a perfectly consistent Bible, but rather it is based on Jesus Christ, the Lord (Yeshua HaMashiach), but if all of the details we know about our faith come from the Bible, how can our perception of it not affect our perception of faith?

Like most males, I'm fairly literal (it's one of the few stereotypical male traits I possess...just ask my wife). When I was training to be a family therapist in the 1980s, learning to think, listen, and speak in a global rather than a linear manner was one of my biggest challenges. Fortunately, I was able to master it well enough to fuel 15 years of post-graduate clinical work, so I am adaptable. However, my general approach to the Bible has been from my default linear perspective. Start at "A", move to "B", move to "C", and so on.

While I've toyed with reading the Zohar, I've been a little shy about it, since just understanding the Bible "straight up" continues to be a challenge. I figured all of the "mystic stuff" would just muddy the waters. Nevertheless, it is a compelling way to approach the word of God, but...

If we aren't all that sure who wrote the different books of the Bible, how old they are, and if they were copied with even the slightest accuracy from what we assume are the original texts, then how do we even know what we know about the Bible? Further, if our level of uncertainty about the Bible is that high, where do we get off divining any spiritual and mystic meaning from what we read, on top of any literal meaning?

Reading the Bible and believing it means what we think it means (or at least what scholars think it means...and they don't all agree on numerous points), takes as much faith as believing in God.

My next book, after I finish Casey's, is Putting Jesus in His Place by Bowman and Komoszewski. Then I'm thinking about taking on both Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman and The Bible As It Was by James L Kugel (and I may even fit in Derek Leman's Yeshua in Context while I'm at it). On the one hand, you could say all this reading is going to really confuse me, and I can't say that it won't. On the other hand, I have a responsibility to expand my understanding of my faith, which includes the holy documents of Judaism and Christianity.

I suppose this is an extension of my previous blog, An Old Dog Looking for a New Book, since I'm revising my reading list (and I almost forgot, I want to read Michael White's Scripting Jesus, but it's still checked out of my local library). Given what I said in yesterday's blog, I have been a little hesitant to invest heavily in religious books, especially those dealing with the New Testament, but I also have to pursue the path that I'm walking until I either reach my goal or hit a dead end (or a drop off into the abyss).

Does anyone else besides me think about all these things? If you do, how do you resolve the inherent conundrums involved? How do you explore all of the uncertainties and inconsistencies presented by the Bible and yet not let it affect your faith?

Don't be shy. I really want to know.

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. -Friedrich Nietzsche

The road is long and we are surrounded by darkness.

Carrying Water

"Ben (the son of) Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from all people, as it is said: 'From all those who taught me I gained understanding' (Psalms 119:99). Who is strong? He who conquers his evil inclination, as it is said: 'Better is one slow to anger than a strong man, and one who rules over his spirit than a conqueror of a city' (Proverbs 16:32). Who is rich? He who is satisfied with his lot, as it is said: 'When you eat the toil of your hands you are fortunate and it is good for you' (Psalms 128:2). 'You are fortunate' -- in this world; 'and it is good for you' -- in the World to Come. Who is honored? He who honors others, as it is said: 'For those who honor Me will I honor, and those who scorn Me will be degraded' (I Samuel 2:30)."

Pirkei Avot 4:1
quoted from Torah.org
Jewish Macho
by Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld

Who is rich? He who is satisfied with his lot may not be the sort of answer we'd like to hear when we consider our incomes, especially in a difficult economic climate. This is especially true based on an article I found at Mother Jones yesterday which states that the gap between the rich and the rest of us in the U.S. is the widest it's ever been in the history of our nation (complete with charts and graphs). While average incomes dropped (adjusting for inflation) from 1979 to 2009 for the majority of citizens, they actually skyrocketed for the top 1% of American earners.

I'm at an age where I have an increased interest in how or if I'm going to be able to retire someday (although everyone should start thinking in this direction from the moment they earn their first paycheck) and this is not happy news. But is there a difference between providing an adequate income and "financial security" (if such a thing exists) for my family and the ambition to "keep up with the Joneses", so to speak? In troubled times, should I, like many Americans or people in the west, continue the course to conspicuous consumption, faster cars, bigger boats, larger houses, and humongous debt?

I don't strive for these things personally, but with all the toys and goodies available on the market, it's hard not to be tempted and instead, to be "satisfied with my lot."

I read an article this morning published at Chabad of Mineola called Daily Judgment. I encourage you to click the link and read the entire write up (it's not long) but in part, the author, Rabbi Yerachmiel Tilles says:

A young scholar came to Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov with a question. He had discovered a contradiction in the teachings of the sages, and wanted to hear how the chassidic master would resolve it. On the one hand, the Talmud states that a person’s parnassah (income and livelihood) for the entire year is determined on Rosh Hashanah. On the other hand, it also declares that “a person is judged each day” for his livelihood. Was this not a contradiction?

In order to address the young Talmud scholar's question, the Baal Shem Tov used a local water-carrier as an example (think of him sort of like Tevye "with a pole across his back and a pail of water tied at each end"). While the Baal Shem Tov upholds the ruling that a person's income for the year is set at Rosh Hashanah, he uses two separate conversations with the water-carrier to illustrate that his attitude about how he receives each day's work changes, "depending on the daily judgment." This is the water-carrier's judgment of how he perceives his life and his toil, not God's.

This works for us, too. It doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't try to get ahead, apply for better jobs, ask for a raise, and strive to provide a better living for our families, but there are many things about our lives and our work in our present situations that we can't always change. The water-carrier couldn't change how heavy the buckets of water were, how children teased him, or how he barely made ends meet at the end of each day, but he could change how he perceived his lot in life. So can we.

Last night I taught a class at my congregation based on my What Did Jesus Teach series. We're taking a look at the different lessons Jesus taught in the Book of Matthew and trying to see if any of them can be found or even alluded to in the Torah. We're using the list of commandments found in The Concise Book of Mitzvoth as compiled by the Chafetz Chayim, which has been determined to be the mitzvot that can be obeyed in the modern age, outside the land of Israel.

As part of the lesson, I mentioned that both the written and oral Torah are considered "the Torah" and that traditionally in Judaism, you cannot understand what the written portion is teaching without an understanding and study of the oral tradition. In other words, Talmud study, at least on some level, is a requirement for understanding written Torah. If studying the written Torah is necessary for understanding the teachings of Jesus, since this was his source material, it creates an additional dimension of learning to be more like Jesus for people who are called Christians.

That's a rather tough concept for my students to get. They seem pretty stuck on "man-made traditions" vs. the Word of God and see the former as fallible and the latter as absolute. Yet the Bible is a book that isn't so much read as it is interpreted. If we could read the Bible like a best selling novel, going through it one or two times would be enough for us to completely "get it" as far as God's intentions for our lives are concerned.

By posting a link to Rabbi Tilles's commentary on daily judgment, I'm hoping to illustrate that accessing the wisdom of the sages isn't in opposition to the Word of God, but instead, an illumination of what we can find if we only look. As I've said in the past, I don't think I could ever rely solely on Christian scholarly publications to define the limits of my understanding of what God is trying to teach. The Jewish people were the keepers of the Torah, the Shabbat, and the only worshipers of God when the ancient ancestors of modern-day Christians and Muslims were giving blood offerings to obscene pagan "gods". I tend to think they have the upper hand on understanding what it's like to try to puzzle through the lessons provided by the Creator.

Like the water-carrier, we are all looking for something, but it's how we choose to do the looking that defines what we'll discover.

Torah study at its highest level is the understanding of the application of the Torah's principles to real people and real life situations -- how do the Torah's eternal truths apply to the human condition. G-d's wisdom is eternal, yet no two people are precisely alike and relate to the Torah in precisely the same manner. Every one of us has his own perspective, his own life story, and his own unique personality. Each of us will see a slightly different message in the Torah, and will have his or her own fresh insight into its beauty and relevance.

Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld

I sit before my only candle, but it's so little light to find my way
Now the story unfolds before my candle
Which is shorter every hour as it reaches for the day
But I feel just like a candle, in a way

Song for Adam
Jackson Browne

Polar Ecclesiology

Some scholars have thought that the Ebionites may have held views very much like those of the first followers of Jesus, such as his brother James or his disciple Peter, both leaders of the church in Jerusalem in the years after Jesus' death. James in particular appears to have held to the ongoing validity of Jewish law for all followers of Jesus. His view, and evidently that of the Ebionites later, was that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish people in fulfillment of the Jewish law. Therefore, anyone who wanted to follow Jesus had to be Jewish. If a gentile man converted to the faith, he had to be circumcised, since circumcision always had been the requirement of a male to become a follower of the God of Israel, as God himself demanded in the law (Genesis 17:10-14).

Jesus Interrupted
Chapter Six: How We Got the Bible
by Bart D Ehrman

Apparently Dr. Ehrman didn't take the Acts 15 letter into account when he wrote his opinion about James, the brother of the Master and head of the Jerusalem Council. Otherwise, he's almost describing a group who I would term as "proto-Messianic Jewish". These are Jews who believed that Jesus (Yeshua) was the prophesied Messiah and that the Messiah taught nothing that was inconsistent with Jewish cultural and religious practice and lifestyle. Dr. Ehrman further states that the:

...Ebionites were strict Jewish monotheists. As such, they did not think that Jesus was himself divine. There could be only one God. Instead, Jesus was the human appointed by God to be Messiah. He was not born of a virgin: his parents were Joseph and Mary, and he was a very righteous man whom God had adopted to be his son and to whom he had given a mission of dying on the Cross to atone for the sins of others.

OK, I don't know of any Messianic Jewish groups who publicly identify with the description of the Ebionites given by Dr. Ehrman, but it is interesting that this New Testament scholar and rather prolific writer does describe a group of early "Jewish Christians" who hold a set of beliefs and an "identity" substantially similar to modern Messianic Jews. Of course, their theology, according to Ehrman at least, is not consistent with Bilateral Ecclesiology in that they did not believe Gentiles could be disciples of the Jewish Messiah without becoming circumcised; that is, without converting to Judaism.

Interestingly enough, Ehrman says that Paul disagreed with the Ebionites and insisted...that the God of Jesus was the God of all people and that gentiles did not have to become Jewish to follow Jesus. Ehrman goes on to say that Paul believed that faith in the death and resurrection is what allowed a person to have right standing with God, not keeping the law, but that Paul believed this true for Jews and Gentiles alike. His writing paints a picture of two different viewpoints in the early Church (and there were many more, according to Christian scholars), one adhered to by the Jewish Ebionites who held to a very Torah-based, Jewish view of Jesus as Messiah, and the other by Paul and his followers, who believed (again, according to what is in Ehrman's book) that the law was no longer relevant to either Jewish or Gentile followers of Jesus.

Modern Messianic Judaism splits the difference by saying Paul believed (more or less) like the Ebionites as far as Jesus being the Messiah and that Jews should continue to live by the Torah, but that the Torah was not applicable or relevant to non-Jewish believers.

I don't want to get much more involved in the details since to do so would be to write a blog post as long as Ehrman's book. However, it is interesting to take a look at the New Testament through the eyes of a Gentile (and formerly Christian) New Testament scholar and see his take on those bits and pieces of information Messianic Judaism reorganizes as Bilateral Ecclesiology. Ehrman describes more of a "polar (opposite) ecclesiology" represented as two competing groups of Christians. In fact, based on the various writings and perspectives of the different "Christianities" existing in the first and into the second century C.E., there were a number of different theologies running around out there, some stating that Jesus was divine and others saying not.

I found some of Ehrman's opinions and findings consistent with what I previously read in Richard Rubenstein's When Jesus Became God. Both Ehrman and Rubenstein have concluded that much of what we understand as the theological foundation of the Christian church today, including the issues of Christ's divinity, the Trinity, the meaning of the death and resurrection, and other core beliefs, weren't solidified in the Church until the Nicene Council in the early 4th century C.E. According to both these men, there is no evidence of a widespread worship of Jesus as God prior to this period in history, nor a final selection of canon for the Bible. This allowed Gospels and letters we do not have in our modern Bibles to be considered, at least by some groups, to be just as authoritative as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (and the Gospel of John is thought to have been "developed" by a Gentile "johannine community" after the destruction of the Temple, to support a much less Jewish perception of Jesus than seen in the other Gospels).

I'm not saying I buy everything these authors are selling, but I do believe that the Bible is a document that must be read and considered as much through the lens of faith and the Spirit as through the mind and intellect. The value of reading the works of men like Ehrman and Rubenstein is that they have the ability to bend and stretch us in ways we wouldn't be willing to do for ourselves. They also present ideas and opinions you won't typically hear from the pulpit of a Church or the bema of a Messianic Synagogue.

At this point, I've finished Erhman's book and am ready to pursue my next "reading assignment". I consider what Ehrman wrote and what he teaches to be valuable, not because I always agree with his perspective, but because he allows us to remove what you might consider our "rose-colored glasses" so that we can see our Bible with all of its warts, scars, and wrinkles. This is what the Bible looks like when we view it through the lens of historical-critical analysis, which is the method Ehrman and other Bible scholars use to examine the Biblical texts.

Dr. Bart Ehrman and Jesus Interrupted is only one step in my walk of faith, but Ehrman and his writing is an important step. As people of faith, we must confront the teachings and logic of those people who do not share our faith (Dr. Ehrman was previously a Christian but now describes himself as an agnostic) or our view of the Bible. We can learn much from how he sees the Word of God and how he, and scholars like him (and Ehrman readily admits that most of his peers are Christians) explain where the Bible came from and what they think it means.

I will write one more blog dedicated to my experience reading Jesus Interrupted, specifically about Erhman's opinion of whether or not, in light of his understanding of the Bible, a person can continue to have a viable faith. His answer may surprise you.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

The Danger Zone

For most Christians, who don't have a conservative evangelical view like the one I had, these textual facts can be interesting, but there is nothing in them to challenge their faith, which is built on something other than having the very words that God inspired in the Bible. And I certainly never intended to lead anyone away from the Christian faith; critics who have suggested that I myself stopped being a Christian once I realized there were differences among our manuscripts are simply wrong and being ridiculous.

Bart D. Ehrman
Jesus Interrupted (2009)

I've got less than 100 pages of Ehrman's book left, but as his writing unfolds before me, I'm gaining a greater understanding of what he's trying to communicate. There is, indeed a danger of a Christian's faith taking a serious hit by reading Ehrman's scholarly opinion (which is based on lots of research) that the Bible is a far less than perfectly consistent document. Yet, in the footnote accompanying the above-quote, Ehrman states that the "textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament" did not lead to his loss of faith, but rather it was "the problem of suffering (in the world) "that eventually led me to become an agnostic."

I actually suspect that the issue of suffering for Ehrman was much more personal than simply a feeling of anguish over the suffering of the world wide population of humans, both in the present and throughout history. In his recorded debate with Dr. Michael Brown on whether or not the Bible provides an adequate explanation for human suffering, Ehrman states that his father's diagnosis of cancer and subsequent death had a significant impact. Ehrman further states during the debate, that a Christian "ministered" to his father, anointed him with oil and told him point blank that God would heal him. No, not that God might heal him, could heal him, or had the power to heal him but, according to Ehrman's account, the Christian said that God would (apparently without a shadow of a doubt) heal him.

Ehrman says his father was tormented for the rest of his days by this pronouncement and was not healed but instead died.

I can't possibly know everything that happened relative to these events and exactly how Ehrman's faith was deconstructed since I only have one book and one recording to go on. However, based on not only the words but the tone of both Ehrman's voice in the recording, and the "tone" of Ehrman's words in his book, he seems to be very angry.

Keep in mind, I can't know this, I can only infer some sort of meaning from the two sources I just mentioned.

What's this got to do with you and me? Plenty.

What is faith?

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. -Hebrews 11:1-2

That's the standard Christian response to my question but it doesn't even begin to touch on what faith really means. In the class I taught last night, as part of our discussion on what Jesus taught about humility and mercy, someone asked "How do you know that you've really been forgiven?"

Good question. There's no objective event that occurs when you are forgiven of your sins by God. Both Luke 5:20 and James 5:15 say that faith is the required ingredient for forgiveness. Mark 16:16 says that "he who believes and is baptized shall be saved." In other words, God doesn't give us a certificate of proof when he forgives us of our sins. We "know" we are forgiven, based on the relevant passages in the Bible and particularly by faith.

James, I am very concerned about the slippery slope you are on. You are reading the same books (Ehrman, etc.) that my formerly zealous intellectual Messianic friends read....and they ended up rabid atheists spewing the most horrid blasphemies against the God of the Bible all over the Internet. It breaks my heart to watch these train wrecks unfold before my eyes. The cognitive dissonance you are experiencing is dangerous. I have seen this confusion take its toll on others very close to me. Please be careful! Praying for you.....and all of us.

Tandi's comment on Judah Himango's blog post
Set Your Hope On Moses

I suppose just reading books by scholars like Bart Ehrman can be dangerous to one's faith, but on the other hand, if faith cannot survive close scrutiny, how much of a faith can it be? At the end of Jesus Interrupted (which I haven't read yet), Ehrman answers the question about whether or not he believes there can be a faith after understanding (and accepting) his perspective on the limited validity and internal inconsistencies of the Bible. At this point, I'm convinced there can be a faith. It wasn't the "evidence" or lack thereof contained in the Bible that resulted in Ehrman's decision to put aside his faith, but his experiences with suffering (and I'll be fair here), both of a personal nature and based on his compassion for humanity in general, that resulted in his walking away from God.

And yet, there are many, many believers across history who have suffered as much or more, have questioned the Bible severely, and who have undergone crises of faith, and still clung tightly to the living God. The answer to keeping your faith or losing it isn't based on external conditions alone. Faith is personal. No two people experience faith in exactly the same way, anymore than no two married couples experience their love and attachment to each other in an identical fashion.

Bart Ehrman and people like him (including my own brother) who once had a faith and then lost it, have decided to put it away (saying a person has "lost" their faith implies that it was accidentally misplaced, not that the person made a conscious and deliberate decision to not have that faith anymore) for individual and personal reasons. It's the difference (in general terms) between one married couple whose relationship survives a series of terrible problems and continues to exist and even perhaps becomes stronger, and another married couple who goes through the same problems and decides to divorce. The only difference for us is that God is always faithful in His relationships; it is we human beings who are the weak link in the relationship.

Ehrman made a decision to tell God that he wanted a "divorce". His decision doesn't have to affect anyone else and it certainly doesn't have to affect me. Does that mean my faith is blind and that I deny all objective evidence and cling to God in a superstitious manner? Not at all. It does mean that faith is more than examining the books of the Bible from a purely historical perspective, and viewing God's word from a strictly literalist, all-or-nothing, point of view.

I can't grow and strengthen my faith unless I challenge it. I can only challenge it by stepping outside my comfort area into the danger zone, and exposing myself to different perspectives on who Jesus is and what he means. Too many believers sit in church pews week after week as if they were in a warm, comfortable womb, and allow their Pastors to teach and preach only on how much Jesus loves us and how forgiveness is always available...and who completely ignore any responsibility we may have to God and to our fellow human beings as believers and disciples of the Jewish Messiah.

Hard questions and even questions that have no apparent answer don't mean that faith is lost. It means that faith is challenged. Some people's faith can survive the challenge, much as Jacob survived his struggle with the angel (Genesis 32:22-32). Faith can win the struggle against impossible odds and even if we are "injured" in the way Jacob was, we are also stronger.

While faith and a relationship with God is personal and unique and thus our challenges of faith are individual, we can't forget the world around us. God originally charged the Children of Israel to be a light to the world (Isaiah 42:6) and I recently mentioned that when we became disciples of the Jewish Messiah, we also inherited that responsibility (Matthew 5:14) and so, like Bart Ehrman, we must be concerned not just with our lives or the lives of those we love, but about everyone, everywhere. That's what "For God so loved the world" (John 3:16) means. But rather than let the "human condition" drive us from God, we need to respond to human suffering the way that God does; with compassion and a message of hope, even when we can't see how everything is going to turn out. That's the short definition of "faith".

500 years ago or so, someone said it this way:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Reading Lamp

Most people do not read the Bible this way. They assume that since all the books in the Bible are found between the same hard covers, every author is basically saying the same thing. They think that Matthew can be used to help understand John, John provides insights into Paul, Paul can help interpret the book of James, and so on. This harmonizing approach to the Bible, which is foundational to much devotional reading, has the advantage of helping readers see the unifying themes of the Bible, but it also has very serious drawbacks, often creating unity of thought and belief where originally there was none. The biblical authors did not agree on everything they discussed; sometimes they had deeply rooted and significant disagreements.

from Jesus, Interrupted
by Bart Ehrman

Does any of this sound or at least feel familiar? It should. Especially the part that says, sometimes they had deeply rooted and significant disagreements. That sounds like us. More accurately, that sounds like the many and varied expressions of what we call "Messianic Judaism" or even "Christianity" (and I suppose all of the mainstream Judaisms, as well). We don't agree. Sometimes that means, we don't get along. But could the cause of our "issues" go back as far as the writers of the New Testament itself?

That's quite a shock. Like many people, I'm used to reading the Bible as a book that, on an ultimate level, is completely internally consistent. However, this isn't the first time I've heard that not all of the NT writers agreed with each other.

I read another Christian scholar (whose name escapes me, but which is enshrined in one of my numerous, previous blog posts), who said that Paul and James disagreed on the fundamental relationship between Gentile and Jewish disciples in the Messianic community (church). Paul tended to grant the Gentile converts greater affinity and identity (according to this scholar, anyway) with the Jewish people than did James and the Jerusalem Council.

I'm currently only on page 64 of Erhman's book, so I don't know where he stands on many issues in detail, but assuming for the moment that it's true that the NT writers did not agree with each other on many theological issues, it makes it difficult for any of us to make a point "because the Bible says so".

For instance, both Messianic Jewish/Bilateral Ecclesiology (MJ/BE) and One Law (OL) groups defend their positions based on various Biblical passages, largely taken from the letters of Paul (and did Paul actually write all of the letters attributed to him?). Discovering the possibility that the Bible contains internally inconsistent and contradictory theologies, how can we make declarations of our various positions based on the Bible with any degree of certainty?

The short answer is "because we have to". Expanding on that a bit, I'll say that people don't do well existing within an extended period of ambiguity. We tend to like "closure", particularly in existential ("who am I?", "what is my purpose in life?") matters. We need to "know" the answer to the meaning of our lives and who we are in God (assuming we believe in God).

Hence we make decisions about what the Bible means and develop theologies, canons, codes, labels, and worship communities (churches, synagogues, whatever) based on those understandings.

But while they're all based on the same essential document (the Bible), all of our beliefs are different...sometimes really different from each other.

One of the points Ehrman goes on to make is that the Bible cannot simply be read, it must be "interpreted". The Bible, according to this book's author, cannot be read and taken at face value. Ironically, Judaism says the same thing about the Torah.

At least from a Chabad point of view, you cannot understand the Torah without an understanding and continual study of the Talmud. Further, the Bible not only requires interpretation (as opposed to a straight reading of the text), but it must be read through the specific lens of tradition. That is, not only must the Torah be interpreted using the Talmud, but there is only one, right way to interpret the Torah/Talmud based on established Rabbinic tradition.

I suppose the correct tradition varies depending on the particular branch of Judaism involved, which is why we see such variability in Jewish religious practice.

Recent write ups in the Messianic blogosphere, such as After Three Days? Third Day? Yeshua and Passover by Derek Leman and Set Your Hope on Moses by Judah Gabriel Himango have contributed to the examination of these issues in our little corner of the web, but my own missives The Deity Problem and An Old Dog Looking for a New Book have added to this discussion as well.

What does it all mean? I don't know.

But if I don't know, how can anyone else say that they do? We have Bible scholars all across the map disagreeing with each other on this bit of minutiae or that, so we can't point in any particular direction and say, the truth is there.

Did I say "truth"?

Wait a minute. Not long ago, I said that I believed (at least as it stands right now) that I see the Bible as God telling us the "truth" about Himself and His interactions with humanity, not the "facts" about Himself. There's a difference:

Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.

-Professor Henry (Indiana) Jones Jr. (played by Harrison Ford)
from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Is the search for faith a search of facts, truth, or some combination of both?

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. -John 14:6 (RSV)

It would have been a little ridiculous for Jesus (Yeshua) to say "I am the way, the fact, and the life...", but I hope you take my meaning. I'm not suggesting that we ignore the facts for the sake of our faith, but I am suggesting that we consider that the Bible is not primarily a book written by and for historians, but a document to be read though a "spiritual lens" in addition to the lens of history and fact.

As I continue with my reading and the exploration of the basis of my faith, I'll post more on these topics, but for now, I just want to say that when you make a declaration about what you believe, and what the Bible tells you about who you are and who others are in relation to you (of particular interest to Jews and Gentiles in the Messianic world), you are making declarations of faith...not necessarily fact.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. -Psalm 119:105

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark. But is the Word a light of fact or of truth?

Looking for a Reason

Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried.
Still I look to find a reason to believe.

from the song Reason to Believe (1965)
Tim Hardin

I've had a number of challenges at work this week (actually, they began last week but I was hoping they'd be solved by now). This naturally has made me feel somewhat frustrated, but work problems come and work problems go. That's life.

What's somewhat more disturbing is what I blogged earlier today and particularly the responses I received on that blog post. No, everyone was polite, kind, and helpful...but I'd just never thought in this direction before:

There are many variations among various manuscripts of NT, some altering the meaning of certain passages significantly. In my early days as a believer I expected nothing but perfection from the word of G-d, so that all the footnotes in my NT used to bother me to no end and even make me question my faith at time. I don't think that NT was meant to be a second Torah where each letter is perfectly preserved by the scribes. It was simply a retelling/announcement of the Good News of Messiah, parts of it passed from person to person, then written down to pass it along.

Gene Shlomovich from his comment on my blog post

Coincidentally (but then, I don't believe in coincidence), I found another source of information that was operating along the same lines.

This form of higher criticism suggests the the Torah didn’t reach it’s final form until about 450 BCE.

This idea can be shocking to a lot of believers. Most conservative bible scholars categorically reject this idea, seeing as how it undermines the reliability of Scripture.

By claiming some books have been heavily edited and are therefore less reliable. “Oh, Leviticus should be taken with a grain of salt, seeing how it wasn’t formed until long after Genesis, having undergone many redactions to harmonize it with the other books!”

from Judah Himango's blog post
Set Your Hope On Moses

On the one hand, you could say that these revelations are part of a developmental process in my education on Christian and Jewish texts and after all, learning is good. On the other hand, it comes as quite a shock that I was so naive and...well, ignorant in my understanding of the document on which my faith is founded.

I still haven't made up my mind how to respond to all of this yet. I'm a little too "emotional" to plan out a reasoned response.

I've been listening to a Rod Stewart Greatest Hits CD, which of course includes "Reason to Believe". Right now, given the internal "shake up" I'm experiencing at how amazingly limited my understanding of the Bible is, I'm looking for a reason to believe. No, my faith isn't gone, but it's taken a pretty big hit. I haven't had a chance to "sleep on it" yet, so I guess we'll have to see how things pan out in the morning.

In the meantime, and hopefully only temporarily, I've lost sight of the road I'm on. The path has disappeared into the fog somewhere up ahead and I'm not sure if it even continues or not. It's like driving on a freeway in the middle of a desert at night. Going 75 mph or faster, you almost assuredly overshoot your headlights, so you can't be absolutely sure what lies ahead in the darkness. You could even hit something that exists out there and not see it until you are right on top of it.

Or the road could simply fall off the end of the earth.

I know there's something Paul said that fits an occasion such as this. I thought of it earlier today, but I can't recall it now. I know there are any number of platitudes that might cover a circumstance such as mine, but I really don't think platitudes will help. Like a man lost on a road at night, I'll have to slow down to a crawl and almost feel my way through the obsidian shroud, hoping and praying that God will provide a street lamp and a sign post.

On that Rod Stewart album there's another song that applies to how I'm feeling or at least how I want to feel (though Stewart admits that he plagerized Bob Dylan when he wrote it):

May the good Lord be with you
Down every road you roam
And may sunshine and happiness
surround you when you're far from home
And may you grow to be proud
Dignified and true
And do unto others
As you'd have done to you
Be courageous and be brave
And in my heart you'll always stay
Forever Young, Forever Young
Forever Young, Forever Young

from Forever Young (1988)
by Stewart, Cregan, Savigar, (and Dylan 1974)

Addendum: This video of Greg Boyd describing his own crisis of faith as a "house of cards" seems particularly valuable. Thanks to Yahnatan for posting it in the comments of my previous blog post.

The road is long and often, we get lost in the dark...